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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

I crave a life of intensity. Just today I was begging a friend on the east coast to quit his job and go with me to Las Vegas. I told him I wanted to live my last days in complete depravity. Drinking brown liquor by a dirty motel pool. Our untoned moderatley hairy chests and fast food bellies burning unevenly in the hot Nevada sun. Surrounded by meth addicts and organized crime middle managers.I want lots of screaming and slapping, unidentifiable gunshots in the night. Police sirens and men wearing dirty white t-shirts and basketball shorts falling down drunk.

My friend told me to be careful what I wish for.

I told him I wanted to feel the burn. Third degree Las Vegas sunburns! Dry skin, dehydrated cotton fuzzy hangover headaches. Falling asleep in filthy bathtubs at four in the morning. Drugs! Hard drugs- drugs you've never even heard of. I want to be a guinea pig for the next generation of deadbeats.

My friend said he was leaving Subway and had to get back to work.

I want my life to be instagrammed in late sixties/early seventies patina. I want to cry like a Kennedy wife. Excess and tragedy, pills and liquor. Fashion and misery on the rocks. Natalie Wood clawing her way back onto the boat with thick red lacquered nails. I want mental illness before mental illness. I want a spooky neurosis. I want people to wonder what the hell I'm doing at six in the morning, slamming cupboards and breaking dishes. Laying on the kitchen floor sobbing with a paper shredder and a cigarette. Shredding pictures of so called old lovers and friends I haven't seen since high school.

No intensity.
Still.
Cold.
Quiet.
A clearing of the throat.
A sneeze.
Bless you.
The back of an envelope.
A smooth pen.
Something to remember.
Something to pick up at the store.
Something for tomorrow. Or the weekend.

Monday, January 14, 2013

This morning I rubbed myself down with a generous amount of unscented moisturizer in an attempt to ward off dry irritated, itchy skin. I then put on my thermal underwear. I imagined that this would hold in the moisturizer, creating a barrier to the dry winter air.

I have found myself wearing sunglasses in the morning. Even when it is still very dark. I find that the sunglasses shield a little bit from the cold. However, I wonder if I am using it as a barrier, a transition from the dark peace of sleep to the stark reality of the day. I start to worry that people on the train think I am crazy, wearing sunglasses when it is almost still pitch black. And then I remember that I don't give a fuck what anyone on the train thinks.

At my el station, Argyle, there is a horrid horrid smell. At first I thought it smelled like someone was cooking garbage. I imagined that there was some insane woman stirring a giant cauldron of old newspapers, kitty litter, old tires, empty bottles, discarded pieces of clothing, random bits of plastic. An urban witch, stirring her garbage potion, cooking up havoc and despair for the city. I think it's just really old, cheap, discarded cooking oil from the many restaurants in the area.

The smell is horrible. And it's never not there. It's always there. In the summer, in the dead of winter. I am usually not so sensitive to such things. I smoke, I miss the occasional shower. I probably am not the best smelling person on the planet. For me to be so taken aback by an odor something is very very wrong.

The smell haunts me. I can almost recreate it in my mind and almost smell it right now I have it so memorized.